In Michael Leavy’s Stream (2024), getaway-gone-wrong meets home invasion in this locked-in hotel slasher. The Keenan family need a weekend away to reconnect and bond, and when they make it to The Pines Hotel, something seems off. The wifi is down, they can’t take credit cards, and the doors lock them in after hours. All becomes clear when hotel guests start dying one by one at the violent hands of masked killers, all streamed live for viewers’ amusement, and gambling opportunities.

It’s impossible to talk about Stream without talking about the Terrifier films, and that’s by design. Stream was made with much of the same filmmaking crew who worked on the Terrifier films. It’s directed by Michael Leavy, who acted in Terrifier, and produced Terrifier 2 and 3. The music in Stream has the same nightmare quality as the music in the Terrifier films, with composer Paul Wiley having worked on all four films. Dreamy synth plus gritty guitar make the viewer feel like the killers might be sneaking up on them. But the most notable comparison is David Howard Thornton, of Art the Clown fame, playing one of four uniformed killers. Though they are all wearing creepy grinning masks, it’s immediately clear to Terrifier fans which menace is played by Thornton. His signature whimsical movements would be recognisable in any costume. His physicality outshines any of the other killers’, but that’s hardly their fault – it would be challenging to keep up with one of the most iconic slashers of our time. Speaking of the cast, Stream is full of horror fans’ favorites: Danille Harris, Felissa Rose, Tony Todd, and Dee Wallace, to name a few. Danielle Harris steals every scene she is in, as hers is one of the strongest performances in the film.

However, the cast of characters is also a place where the film drops the ball. The action takes place in a hotel, so it makes sense there would be rooms full of guests. Maybe it’s an off-season weekend, because there are only a handful of other parties that the Keenan family meets. There are several characters that the audience sees once, and never again. It would make sense to introduce characters to give them kill scenes later, but some just disappear from the action. It felt like the movie had been edited down, but not by enough to make the elusive characters make sense. And they could have sacrificed a few more minutes of the two-hour runtime.

The deaths are creative, including a head slammed into an arcade game joystick, a game of noughts and crosses carved into a chest, and a skull crushed with bare hands. There were many kills and they were intense, but watching this film with the knowledge that the Terrifier team was behind it, the gore was lacking. Terrifier fans looking for that same level of gore will not find it in Stream. However, that could be a mark in the positive column for slasher fans who find the gore in Terrifier to be too much. Stream might just have the right amount of gore for fans of more traditional slashers. The hotel setting is perfect for this story. It’s an ideal setting to lock in a band of strangers, who don’t know if they can trust each other, and stick up a bunch of “security cameras” to stream the action online.

Stream is a cutting commentary on the gamification of everything, that humans will bet on anything if they get bored enough, and how the screen makes us feel separated from violence. A sequel is already in the works, and Stream 2 plans to explore the wider world, and show more behind-the-scenes of the games.

Stream is available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV in the UK and US.